Bob Shepherd: Ditch Common Core and CC Tests

Bob Shepherd, veteran curriculum and assessment designer, is now teaching in Florida. Here are his thoughts on Common Core and the testing obsession:

How to Prevent Another PARCC Mugging: A Public Service Announcement
The Common Core Curriculum Commissariat College and Career Ready Assessment Program (CCCCCCRAP) needs to be scrapped. Here are a few of the reasons why:
1.The CCSS ELA exams are invalid. First, much of attainment in ELA consists in world knowledge (knowledge of what—the stuff of declarative memories of subject matter). The “standards” being tested cover almost no world knowledge and so the tests based on those standards miss much of what constitutes attainment in this subject. Imagine a test of biology that left out almost all world knowledge about biology and covered only biology “skills” like—I don’t know—slide-staining ability—and you’ll get what I mean here. This has been a problem with all of these summative standardized tests…